


What You Made Yourself Do

by nowsaguaro



Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: But in a not cute way, Deep Conversations, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Sickfic, Up All Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-26 04:25:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18175817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowsaguaro/pseuds/nowsaguaro
Summary: Set a couple nights before Penelope's graduation, Schneider needs company while he pukes his brains out.





	1. Cool Floors and Callejeros

**SMS: I’m dying. [11:57:06 PM]**

**SMS: Pen! [11:58:11 PM]**

**SMS: Penelope. [11:58:53 PM]**

**SMS: Come up here pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease :(((( [12:02:09 AM]**

**SMS: Schneider chill I’m putting shoes on, you better be bleeding out of your eyes**

**if you’re blowing up my phone like this in the middle of the night [12:03:00 AM]**

 

A minute later, Penelope walks through his front door to an empty apartment. “......Schneider?”

“In here.” _Okay, to his defense, he does sound really bad._

She rounds the corner into his bathroom, where Schneider is laying with his face on his tile floor. “So, what’s up, how’re things with you?” She jokes, looking down at a shirtless Schneider, with puke on his feet and pants, and – _oh that’s sad_ – his undershirt balled up in his hand to wipe his mouth.

“Ha... ha.” At least he is aware that he looks pathetic.

 

Penelope, with good reason, wants to rule out the worst and to believe he has a virus or food poisoning. (She knows his puke would smell a lot more flammable if he slipped, anyway.) "Why are we face-down on the floor looking like a beached whale in dress socks?”

“Cool on my face.”

“Okay. Alright, you just stay quiet,” she coos while very lightly patting his horrifically sweaty shoulder. She sports a genuinely worried look which is definitely painted with a stifled laugh as she notices more details of his current state; he missed two belt loops in the back of his slacks, he clearly struggled earlier to take the plastic seal off a bottle of antacids and gave up, and _-uck-_ at some point today, he ate _a lot_ of Skittles.

Noticing the discarded tie and dress shirt on the floor, she asks, “where were you tonight? What happened?”

“We went to a diner after the symphony tonight. Bad eggs,” his voice cracks into a whimper, “bad, _bad_ eggs.”

 **_Who’s ‘we’?_ ** “Are you sure it was food poisoning and not a virus?”

“Well, the only other things I ate today were sour Skittles, juice from the callejero–”

“You bought fruit juice on the street in the middle of this heat wave?”

“I am trying to buy local, Pen! And Tomás lets me practice _mi español_. I also made myself a little pan-seared chicken breast right before leaving the house.”

“Did you just say you prepared poultry how people prepare tuna? No puedo contigo oh my God.”

“It was _not_ good.” Schneider tries to push himself to sitting but just the slight jostle of moving his arms gives him sea sickness, so he stills again.

“Schneider, I don’t know what to tell you other than to advise you not to repeat any of today’s food... decisions.” He groans for 3 full seconds. “But _you_ know that.” She makes an oh-right face to herself. Next, she springs into nurse mode.

 

“Okay, when was the last time you’ve kept down any fluids?”

He hoarsely gags like a sea lion.

“So, Schneider,” she leans down and talks louder as if she needs to speak through a car window, “what we’re gonna have you do is I’m gonna sit you in the shower so you can get some water in your body,” seeing the corner of his mouth turn up, she adds, “and just so you know, you’ll be keeping your boxers on and oh wow, you just- you just look so gross right now and zero part of me is enjoying this view.”

“If you say so…”

“Your mouth has literally not been fully closed or your eyes fully open since I walked in. _Caso cerrado._ Now let’s get this belt out of the three loops that you actually put it through–”

“You’re being so mean to me…” he whines into the floor. “I wanted my _friend_ up here, not a mean old nurse. Friends don’t tell friends they’re not sexy.”

“Okay, primero: who you calling _old_ ? Secondly, your _friend_ is making sure you might eventually make it out of the bathroom without a paramedic and last … when we get you in the shower, and you’re feeling fresh and alive again, I will,” she painfully eyerolls out, “be... _nicer_. As if I’m not taking care of your ass already.”

“That’s all I ask.” He says with all the smugness he can muster with very spitty lips and still closed eyes.

 

\--

 

Pulling off Schneider’s slacks was not as weird as she thought it might be, but Penelope would definitely want a trophy for –or maybe to never mention– her brushing the bits of puke off his body and face before he fully reanimates. She crouches just outside the shower with its glass door ajar so she can keep a hand on his shoulder to avoid any drown-y scenarios.

Penelope shuts the water off once she thinks he’s sufficiently reversed the pathetic raisin-ing process and she leaves the room with his balled up clothes, returning five minutes later with a bottle of Gatorade she snagged from Alex’s room.

“This way,” she hands it to him, “we can replenish everything that no doubt exploded out of all ends of you,” she pauses to watch him scrunch his face at his own embarrassing misery, “Hey, man, I know how it is. I’ve been to Cracker Barrel.”

Schneider takes a swig, “you wanna watch TV with me while I wait to clear out my entire gastrointestinal system?”

“Sounds a little wild, even for a Friday night,” she deadpans, “and I don’t know, it’s already almost 1.” Her next commitment isn’t until her graduation ceremony on Sunday and, not to mention, she really doesn’t want to leave. “Eh, okay, whatever. Only if I can borrow one of your big fluffy robes.”

 

\--

 

After about 20 minutes, with the both of them in his decadent white hotel robes, Penelope interrupts the bizarre low-quality crime drama. “Okay, what the hell are we watching?”

“What do you mean? You chose it.”

“I thought _you_ chose it! I have no idea what this is!”

“I didn– okay, no more TV.” He flicks off the program and leans his head back to rest on the top of the couch. He looks like he should have flies circling him.

After a moment, Penelope breaks the silence, “so who’d you go to the symphony with? Anyone I’d know?”

“Nobody,” he turns his head very slowly to look at her, “just a friend.” He smiles with his eyes closed.

“Am I going to see her walk out your bedroom later? That kind of friend?” She tries to curb her anxiety about it into a playfully judgmental tone.

“Katya and I are not like that.” He starts getting a little twitch of a smile.

Penelope thinks: _Shit, Katya is a sexy name._ “Oh- I was just wondering where you met- where you met this friend, that’s all I was wondering.”

“Okay,” he rolls his head back to look straight up at the ceiling, “we met at a sailing club I used to go to.”

There’s a pause while she looks at the side of his face.

“Schneider, –”

 

He gets up and runs to the bathroom, “it’s happening!” He runs to the toilet and hurls intermittently for a good 2 minutes before she hears the sink run and some toothbrushing. His voice calls, “Hey, _Pen_ , could you grab my face wipes from my gym bag? It’s near the ficus.”

 

She spots his navy duffel and unzips it to find mostly books. She must have taken a while looking through his bag, because he walks up right next to her and grabs the face wipes himself. “Welp. Just ruined soup for myself, prolly for life.”

Having absolutely no desire to dwell on that imagery, she asks, “Schneider, what is all this?”

“Oh,” he responds much more brightly (and mint-breathed) than he was able to before and grabs the books from her hands, “this one, _Spanish for Gringos_ , is to talk to you guys, plus I just think it’s a good idea to speak a bit of _español_ in LA. This one, _History of the Rust Belt_ , is because Elena is getting me to look into aid for Flint and some other midwestern cities with water system pollution problems, _Judith Butler: Collection of Essays_ is to get into more useful gender theory discussions as a cis man. Elena tells me to take Butler’s earlier essays with a grain of salt– what?”

 

Penelope is well aware of the _way_ she’s looking at him. She thinks, _how do you care about us this much?_

Seeing her expression, he responds, “I have to do some homework to get to be part of the family, Pen. I took them out at the library next to my gym only because I couldn’t find the right stuff online–”

“You know, you don’t have to do all this.” Despite being consumed by his very tall shadow, her smile still glints up at him.

“Well I like being someone people look forward to talking to or who they’d want to have around.”

“Aww,” she gives him a side hug, “you are that someone–” she stops and picks up a coin that’s on a tiny Japanese dish on the table, “what’s this?”

“That’s, uh, my one-year sobriety chip,” he adds incredibly matter-of-factly to smooth over his nerves.

Penelope is a little embarrassed that she didn’t recognize it right away.

“One year was far enough away from my decision to change my life that I had already lost my friends and shook off my whole diseased lifestyle, but it was still close enough to that decision to really remember who I was before. I remember feeling the most alone at that meeting. But the most proud.”

Penelope reads the coin more carefully, “ _to thine own self be true_.” She turns it over to see a prayer.

“Yeah, the 12 steps center a lot around God. I guess I felt a bit of a disconnect with the program for that reason,” he flicks his eyes to see how she reacts and continues, “part of the reason I was so proud to get to that point was because I knew I had made it there on my own.”

“You did,” Penelope places her hand on his forearm, “and I am so, so glad you made yourself the man that you are.”

Schneider, still towering over her, curls a small, grateful smile. He takes the silence as an opportunity to walk over to the couch and tugs a face wipe out to cleanse himself of any remaining puke-sweats.

“Feeling alone,” he looks down at his feet, “has shaped a lot of the way that I think about love. It seems like no matter what, my self-management takes precedence over anything. It has to. I was _alone_ at the worst moments of my life. I might act juvenile, but inside I feel about a hundred, like I’ve lived an entire life already.” She walks over toward the couch, too, and he continues, “at this point, I think I just want something or someone in _addition_ to my life. Not another life. I’m already on my second book and there’s only two books. Does that make sense?”

“That actually makes a huge amount of sense to me,” she sits on the couch where Schneider joins her. “When Max said he wanted kids, I realized he was looking for someone to _start_ a life with. But I’d already started mine. I _have_ kids, I’ve _been_ married. I just want to be next to somebody who I love and for us to support each other. Not to check off unchecked boxes.”

 


	2. Customs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Schneider and Penelope discuss the future

Schneider nods thoughtfully and remains silent for a moment. “Do you ever realize that you and I never talk about the future? Just sort of the present and the past, I guess.”

“Huh. That’s true. I have so many variables," she holds up her fingers to count, "–kids, depression, PTS, my mother's health– that could change my life at any moment that I stopped really planning ahead or... hoping… for things. Oh, God, that sounds sad.”

“Hey, you’re graduating on Sunday,” he looks at the clock, “tomorrow! That was made on hoping and planning. And y’know, it’s not so much about _variables_ like kids or health, Pen, but about circumstance. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow, or you could live 50 more years. Loving your life is planning on having the 50 years, not assuming you peaked yesterday.” He slinks his hand into her sleeve to hold her wrist, “what do you picture when you picture being 50 or 60 or 70?”

“Well, for starters, I always assume my mother will out-live me, of course.” She’s not entirely joking.

“Claro,” he shrugs.

“And, in grand Cuban _tradición_ ,” she adds in Lydia’s voice and hand gestures, “I will live to 95, dye my hair purple, and pencil my eyebrows in an inch above my brow.”

“I can actually easily picture that.”

“That better not be you calling me old again. Because I live on the two-strikes-you’re-out system, Schneider.”

“No! I can just sorta picture you living... forever. I can’t think of why,” he adopts a sarcastic pensive face, “but something about your family makes me believe you’ll cling to your youth.”

She hits him lightly on the leg, “this from a man who had a paper route in his 40’s.”

“Well I like an excuse to travel around the city!” He asks, “would you move? Out of LA?” Schneider shakes his head and laughs, “woah, that makes me sad to think about.” (He thinks: _why the hell would she pay to live in a 3 bedroom apartment if she didn’t have to?)_

“I’m content for now.” She lays a hand on his thigh, then removes it almost immediately, “what about you? I know things didn’t work out with Avery and – come to think of it – I hardly know anything about what you do when you’re not at my place. For those _few minutes_ a week, I mean.”

 

He thinks for a moment. “I super around the building, flirt with the lonely old ladies. I stay busy. Gig economy, and such.”

“Uh… huh…” She looks at him skeptically, waiting for him to continue but -oop- he’s done. “Would you sell the building?”

“Not as long as my favorite tenants were here.” He lays an open hand on top of her head like he’s holding a basketball. They both laugh distractedly.

"Y'know, Schneider, for someone so deeply loyal, you do kind of flutter around in your own world." He crinkles his brow for a second. "I mean, I can tell you're not doing 'the paleo thing' anymore by the amount of Skittles on the floor in there." She laughs but develops a serious tone, "I'm not cleaning those up, by the way."

 -

After a bit of silence (if you don't count the bubbling coming from Schneider's organs), Penelope asks, “can I tell you something?”

His eyes bug for a half second before he nods.

“Part of me is afraid to have some _gran amor_ again.” Penelope stares down at her hands, shuddering at saying it out loud for the first time, “not even because of how Victor treated us. I just think I never learned who I am without it. Growing up Latina, even to my own family I felt functional, like I’m necessary to the bloodline while at the same time not being counted in it.”

“I think you and I both have experience in unlearning what our parents told us our greater purpose was.” Schneider drapes a long arm across both of her shoulders. “And this might come out wrong, but... we don’t have a greater purpose.”

She scoffs.

He clarifies, “no, maybe humans in general do, but you have to give yourself permission to customize your own life.” He squeezes her and they stay silent for more than a few moments.

She turns her head to look up at him and, grinning, places her open hand on his chest. “You know you’re my _Schneid ‘r die_ , right?” Penelope bites her smile, knowing that name-incorporated word play is his favorite.

Over-excited to play along, he retorts, “well, you’re my Pen...nsylvania.” He scrunches his eyes closed. _Off my pun game_.

“Oof. We both know you can do better than that.” She uses her hand on his chest to make a patronizing pat and returns to what he said, “so, by ‘customize,’ you mean control? Is there something _you_ wish you had more control over?”

Without a pause, Schneider responds while he removes his draped arm, “it’s not so much that I don’t have any control over it, but I just don’t think I have the confidence for a lot of the things I wish I had said or done.”

“Well, weigh the consequences if you do against the consequences if you don’t. For instance, did it eat you up to not stand up to your father until recently?” She gives his hand a squeeze. “Or could you live in that silence? Were you happy in that silence?”

 

He shifts to look at her in the eyes. “I can be happy in the silence. But I know I’d be much happier saying- just. The things I have to say.” He twitches his lips as though there was more, but instead he peels the remote out from under his leg and switches on the TV. He wouldn’t let her know, but whenever the screen gets darker, he can see her reflection sneaking glances at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My experiences with my Cuban-ity center almost entirely around being herded into marriage & part of me believes there is more familial denial centered around my not wanting children than there is around my being gay LOL


	3. Créelo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mornin'!

Through the overtaking late night infomercials and a passionate conversation about how they both thought Jerry Springer was dead, they drift in and out of sleep, sinking closer into each other on the couch.

\--

 

Around 4:30am, Schneider wakes up and sees a very contorted Penelope, with her head bent at an alarming angle against his side. He wiggles out from under her and shifts to the very edge of the couch to let her fully sprawl out. He finesses multiple remotes to turn off the TV and all of the lights in his place so he didn’t have to get up.

 

\--

 

Penelope wakes up around 6:00 and sits up to an apartment still pre-sunrise and of course luxuriously dark with his blackout curtains. She squints through the dark to see Schneider sleeping upright, his head sunken into his chest.

She grabs one of his throw pillows – _Jesus is that silk?_ – and gently places it on his lap before laying her head there.

 

\--

 

Around 7:00, they’re both stirring awake, probably woken by the same siren on the I-5 freeway. Penelope rolls over onto her back and opens her eyes to stare up Schneider’s nostrils ( _¡¿Aa–_ _oh, right._ ) the events of the night coming back to her.

At her info-processing jolt, Schneider’s eyes flicker open to look down at the weight on his lap. His drowzy brain smiles sweetly down at her. He thinks, **_Pen_ **. “Oh, right, all that,” he says instead.

Finally, she sits up to cut the intimacy a little, “are you feeling better? I don’t hear any bubble-gut…” She pokes his stomach.

“I feel a _lot_ better.” Looking down at his still damp red boxers cornering out of the robe he must have sleepily opened, he adds, “I’m not looking forward to finding wherever you stashed my sour dress clothes from last night.”

“Well, I’m not looking forward to using your bathroom right now, but I gotta pee.” She gets up and tiptoes across the morning-chilled hardwood. _Well, cold for LA_ hardwood.

While Penelope takes care of that, Schneider tiptoes to his bedroom, where he has a 2 oz bottle of ethyl-alcohol-free mouthwash in his bedside table’s top drawer.

With nowhere to spit, he reluctantly cracks open his window and dribbles it out. After quickly fixing his hair in the mirror beside his bed, he steps back into the living room.

She comes walking back in about the same time, now without the comfy robe over her pajamas, and he asks, “how’s the bathroom looking?”

“Scorched earth.” She flicks her eyes up to meet his and laughs.

“I might knock a few bucks off your rent if you forget everything you saw last night.”

“If I had that power, I’d have done it already, trust me.”

He’s surprised when she sits back down on the couch rather than heading downstairs. _No time like the present._

While he sits down next to her, he starts, “so something stuck out to me about last night.”

“What’s that?” Her heart starts pounding, trying to scan through any number of times she was embarrassingly vulnerable during their marathon heart-to-heart.

“I think –” he sniffs dramatically, “did you brush your teeth?”

“Hey, I’m not the only one smelling fresh!” She accuses, and blows a curl out of her face.

“Your words are nice, but I’m feeling very put on the spot!” His voice cracks out.

With an eye roll she throws her hands up to make a _‘keep it moving’_ motion, “what were you saying, Schneider?”

“I was just going to say… that I noticed you kind of grilled me about my night out. Y’know, with Katya.” He sucks in his lips and squints at her, purposefully trying to make her squirm a little.

“Well, it’s just not too often that you hear from a man ‘oh this is my rich Russian buddy, _Katya_ ! We do rich people things together and get late night breakfast _and then she goes home to her cats!_ ’”

“I just want to put it out there that she’s ethnically _Bulgarian_ and is from Pittsburgh, so…” He waves his fingers around, “maybe even more important to mention is that I dropped her off at her home by 8:30pm. Where she lives with her _husband_.” He punctuates.

Feeling stupid, Penelope avoids eye contact. “So, should I feel special that I was the only one to–” she makes an overly suggestive voice and puts up air quotes, “–undress you last night?” She waves her hand toward the bathroom with a grimace, “that I was the only one that got to see your little, uh, one-man-show?”

 

“I don’t _know_. Do you?”

 

“Do I... _what?_ ” She evades.

 

“Feel special that you - and only _you_ \- got a backstage pass to watch me at the Porcelain Altar over there?”

Both of their ears were ringing. It _sounds_ like the kind of disgusting facetious flirtation they usually touch on, but _feels_ like being caught doing something you shouldn’t.

“I wasn’t super thrilled with how ‘all-access’ the ‘pass’ ended up being, but – and this is humiliating – it was nice to feel needed.”

“Ha! Who’s pathetic, now?” He points a finger at her regretful face.

“Still you, Schneider.” He deflates a little and she points down at his outfit, “ _oye_. You live here and you still haven’t found your way into some pants?”

“You’re right. I _live_ here. So I don’t _need_ pants.”

“How ‘bout just some dry underwear? You _‘live here’_ so you don’t _‘need’_ a dry fundillo either, huh?”

She has to wonder if he embarrasses easily through all his worn confidence and apparent cluelessness.

“Well. Okay. I’ll break out some of my _Saturday Satins_ .” He slaps his thighs and rises to his feet with all the confidence of - _welp, I guess he doesn’t embarrass easily_. Schneider looks down at her and then swipes his eyes around the room, “did you wanna…” he points in the direction of the bathroom.

Her heart picks up, “... wanna, what?”

“Shower first? I definitely have to muscle in some serious skincare to erase last night so you might have to wait a while if I go first.”

“Oh, um. I should head downstairs. Mami’s no doubt putting on some Café Bustelo right about now.”

“Oh!” He rubs the back of his neck and looks nearly disappointed, “right, of course, yeah, um. Go. Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow at graduation, then.”

“....Or you could wave your lifetime _‘backstage pass’_ and walk right the hell into our frickin’ apartment like you always do…?” Penelope plays confused but only to hide how pleased she is at his subtly hurt expression.

He definitely brightened up at the suggestion and whimsically added, “in that case, I’ll get all dolled up for you two.”

“Yeah, maybe my mother would serve you an extra helping of frijoles if you wear those bicycle shorts again.” She points up and down his legs and giggles out the door.  


* * *

 

As soon as Schneider runs the shower and strips down, he hears a knock at the door. He switches off the shower and throws on a towel before heading over.

He looks through the peephole to see Penelope anxiously flexing and un-flexing her hands.

While he’s still opening the door, she side-steps into his apartment and closes the door behind her.

“ _Pen?_ ” He gives her a mostly questioning face with a tinge of amusement. “What’s up? Are you being chased?!” He jokingly looks out the peephole, but quiets when she doesn’t crack a smile.

“I never went downstairs.” She looks down at her feet, “I was thinking…” and raises her head back up but stops when she notices the soft and concerned look on his face. She feels a little light-headed.

Then Penelope remembers who she’s talking to and gets her smile back, which Schneider cautiously mirrors.

He feels like he has to whisper. “Why didn’t you go downstairs?”

“I, uh.” At a glacial pace, she raises her arm to place her hand over his heart and holds her breath while she braces herself for his response.

Schneider blinks rapidly and raises his hand to place it over hers on his chest, which is now rising and falling pretty quickly.

Penelope, less cautiously now, slides her hand out from under his and up to the back of his neck. _Your move._

Her hand on his neck moves into his hair once he decides to swing down to her. “Is this… happen–” he interrupts himself and kisses her against the door.

 

A _deep_ kiss.

 

A **deeeeep** kiss.

 

They both breathe out sharply through their noses while they pull apart.

Penelope chuckles and places a few fingers over her lips, “so…”

Schneider can’t help but chuckle, too, even though he wonders if this is what a heart attack feels like.

She gives him a swift well-that’s-that clap on the shoulder and opens the door again.

Through disbelief, he sputters out, “you’re just gonna...?” He shakes his head, vaguely gesturing at the hallway.

“Well, we’ll see you at lunch, right?"

Without missing a beat, he smiles, "before then."

And she's out the door.


	4. Ju Kno Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pair see (maybe not) a new side of Lydia.

Feeling butterflies (a welcome break from what he was feeling last night), Schneider approaches Apt. 402 but stops when he unmistakably hears the loud ticka-ticka-ticka that sets apart Cuban conversation from any other noise.

 

He opens the door to witness a rapid-fire dispute between Pen and Lydia that ~uses his _name_ and involves a lot of _gesturing_ in his direction~ but in a language that mostly discourages his participation. _Perfect_.

 

 _“¿Este cabrón? ¿Él?”_ // “Mami, no entiendes lo que pasó… estaba vomitando” // _“¡¿Estabas vomitando?!”_ // “No. Él comió .. eh… huevos podridos y fru…” // _“¡Ay pero no me dijiste que él comió huevos podridos! ¡Qué rrromántico!”_ // “No, Mami, Schneider me mandó un mensaje para ayudarle, y cuando subí, él estaba temblando en el piso del baño y no podía mover ni tomar nada. Entonces-” // _“¿Y qué vas a hacer en su apartamento a la medianoche? ¿Trajiste la puta bolsa de cuero que tenían los doctores en los años ‘40?”_ // “ **Entonces** , Mami, quería hacer algo pa’ él como hablarle un poquito y ver un programa en la TV y.. es que… dormí en el sofa y él no me despertó. ¡Nada más! Mami! A ti te gusta Schneider. ¿Por qué te importa?”

 

When the final words silence Lydia, Schneider sure wishes they were speaking as slow as his _Spanish for Gringos_ CD makes conversations seem. He thinks: _I guess the title is accurate._

Lydia whips her head around to the man still standing in the open doorway. “Ju!”

He looks cartoonishly bug-eyed.

“Ju two rrrrrreeek of e-sex!” She flicks an accusatory hand between them. “es like Avenida Pantilla in Habana around here!”

Schneider looks up to make a so-that’s-where-we’re-at face at Penelope, while Lydia continues to live out a community theatre production in the living room.

“I kno how ju are, eSchneider. I kno oll about what ju do wit jour inbited _friends_ upstairs!” He’s now bordering on cowering, and tries to remember if Lydia was always this scary. “Wale not. My. ¡Lupita!” She finishes in a flourish of her hand like an old and Catholic villainous fairy godmother with a storm cloud swirling behind her.

As though Penelope also feels the urge to stop the spell, she jumps in, “ _Mami_ . _Ya_ . For the last time, I fell asleep on. the. couch! And,” she fans out her fingers next to her head, “ _my_ choices are _my_ choices.”

Schneider, who had been looking down at his shoes, looks up through his brow and catches that she left out the ‘ _we’_ part of ‘slept on the couch’ and he micro-nods to acknowledge that he’ll keep up _that_ narrative. Probably an indication that she left out the ‘made out against the door’ piece of the puzzle as well.

She continues, “it will only ever be my business!”

“Pero guat if we hav to move?” Lydia finally gets at her true anxiety and the bickering starts to make a lot more sense.

 

Penelope thinks: _oh, right. This couldn’t have been about Schneider. It’s about disaster preparedness over my repeated relationship failures._

 

“Why would you have to move?” Schneider’s stake in this finally wins over his will to be silent.

Penelope is first to answer, “she thinks that I’m gonna screw something up in two months and we’ll have to find a new place to live. One where I didn’t burn bridges with the _property manager._ ” The way she smiles out the last few words almost turns the idea flirtatious.

A primal part of his brain betrays him, _‘I’ll settle for a burnt bridge.’_

 

“She alrready had a husban like ju! An he failed the family!” Lydia attempts her best _‘y ya’_ voice though it’s extremely watery. Penelope’s face falls half in surprise that it wasn’t framed as a criticism on her own judgment and half in embarrassment over what _Mami_ is taking out on Schneider.

Anything whimsical that at any point today might have played across Schneider’s face now evaporates and he feels in a million pieces, a million silent pieces. He thinks, _No. No. If there were ever a family discussion that I should be participating in, it’d be this one_.

“No. She didn’t already have a husband like me. _Y tú lo sabes_ , Lydia! I’ve known you all for almost two decades! Breaking my sobriety-” Penelope tries to interrupt him to save him a painful discussion - “Breaking my sobriety was ending a streak, not throwing eight years away!” He’s now uncharacteristically defensive and loud. “And my addiction - my disease - it’s something I look at directly in the mouth every. day.”

Penelope’s face contorts into a sympathetic and grateful smile, but she stays quiet.

He continues and looks dead on into Lydia’s increasingly concerned eyes, “losing my daily battle with my chemistry is fundamentally different from what Victor did!” Penelope’s mouth drops open just a little bit, stunned. _Oh he went there._ He continues, much quieter now but possibly more confident, “his version of self-preservation was his refusal to change his habits. My self-preservation is coming down here and eating dinner with my favorite people on earth.” He points to the floor, “because, unlike him, I never forgot what a blessing that is.”

Schneider is shaking and desperately fights his urge to apologize. _No, hold it down, Schneiderman, that needed to be said._

Penelope is shaking, too, and desperately clenches her mouth closed to stop herself from letting out an ‘oh boy’ at the heart swell she’s getting for him. _Get it together, puta._

-

Lydia takes a step toward Schneider and lets out a heavy breath but decides against it and retreats behind her curtains. By principle, it shouldn’t be apology enough that she’s quiet with regret, but it is.

Schneider, still quiet, sits down at the table. Penelope joins him and puts her hand over his.

Before she can begin, two arms slink around his shoulders and a head leans against him.

“Jou’re rright, ESchneider.” She swallows. “I’m sorry.” She slides a now cold plate of tostones and over-easy eggs – which she prepared earlier in the morning – away from in front of Penelope and toward Schneider. “Mi preciosito.” Lydia coos before landing four abuelita kisses to his cheek.

He sticks his tongue out at Penelope and he’s already breathing out his tension in response to the feeling of that radiated trust.

At Penelope’s dejected, “I mean, I was just about to eat that, Mami," Lydia sharpens her doding expression to look over.

"Oh, guat, now ju can’t cook?”

_Ah, back to the natural order, I see._

When Penelope gets up to grab leftovers from the fridge, Lydia moves to sit in her place and puts both of her small hands over his fist on the table.

“Ju know, I think of ju as the man who had me wake up in the hospital, lit up like a Christmas tree.” She puts an open hand on his cheek.

He leans into the hand. “Yeah, that was kind of a safety hazard, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Penelope answers, standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

Lydia circles back, “ju will make a fine husban.”

Penelope and Schneider both panic-think, ohwaitthat’snotwhat–

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation engines online will only clarify so much but the fight is a little funny if you can get some of it.


	5. Punchlines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tie up this fic in a little bow mwah

When a three person breakfast becomes a five person breakfast, leads into a graduation party planning sesh, which then tails into an uncomfortable group discussion about finding the right lipstick shade that’s “professional, but floozie enough to get ahead,” Schneider and Penelope both have no choice but to bottle their itch to review the morning. Penelope has a lot on her mind this weekend, even more now that she has to unpack Alex’s alarming contributions to the table’s discussion on navigating sexuality in the workplace.

 

After the stiff dining chairs start to take a toll on everyone, Lydia less-than-subtly offers to take Alex and Elena to the park for the first time in 7 years, leaving Penelope and Schneider standing in the middle of the apartment, alone.

 

“So…”

“So… yup.” Schneider expertly responds. 

“We should… talk?” Penelope doesn’t know what, if anything, needs to be said.

“Oh, what about?” He tries out a sarcastic icebreaker.

“Schneider,” she takes a step closer, “about what you said earlier–”

“I was thinking it was out of line,” he interrupts.

“That’s not what I thought at all.”

“No?”

“Everything,” she inhales and stares her eyes up to the ceiling, “uh, that you said. I’ve thought it before.”

He smiles a little, though he feels sad for her. “I think you got to know me  _ a lot _ in the last 14 hours. I can now officially say that – without a doubt – you know me better than anyone.” He sees her smile and adds, “you and your mom were neck and neck for a while.”

She lets out a laugh that might have hidden a fraction of a sob, before she even notices that she’s crying.

His face plummets to concern and he brings her in for a hug. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, what’s up? What happened just now?” He lays his cheek on the top of her head and eases her down to sit at the couch.

“I don’t know! A lot!”

“Yeah, what with graduating tomorrow and your mom calling you a puta…”

Penelope hits him in the stomach, careful not to make any moves that might make him let go of the hug. Then she rises out of it anyway to look him in the eye. “And…” She chews her lip nervously.

“Pen, y’know, if this,” he swirls his hand in non-commitment in the air between them, “was too much, we can call it a fluke and just return to normal.”

“Did it not feel normal?” She feels herself asking the question before she even really knows what she means.

Penelope’s hopeful, searching eyes give Schneider enough confidence to say his immediate thought, “it felt more normal than us never – than if we didn’t.”

“Part of me thinks we have to talk more about the fight with Mami than we do about… all the other stuff.”

He’s silent for a moment, running through all the worst case scenarios and then bites the bullet, “you start.”

 

“Or… maybe we...don’t gotta talk.”

He smiles, already moving closer to her slowly, “yeah, I’m all talked out.”

She turns her head up to place her forehead against his, “Can I get a recording of you saying that? Because I don’t think I’ll ever hear it again.”

At this, Schneider sits up and away from her. “Well, there is one thing I’ll say:”

“There he is.” She deadpans.

“You got jealous.” He smiles back. He raises his eyebrows and points a finger at her.

When Penelope sits up, too, and opens her mouth to defend herself, he continues.

“I feel like I didn’t get a chance to really make fun of you enough for that.”

She rolls her eyes but is much less embarrassed to be caught in jealousy now than she might have been last night.

“Boy, if you think for a second that you have the upperhand after I became the first person to ever tell you that you can’t just *surface cook* chicken…. Or really after anything I had to see you do last night –” A thought interrupts her. She remembers the swell in her stomach after watching Schneider stand up for himself this morning. Her smile fades quickly and, “oh, God.” She puts her face in her hands.

He stays completely still, waiting for a cue to interact in some way with her illegible mood. 

And she starts to laugh. She looks at him - incredulously - and laughs until her eyes water. 

Looking at her, he has no choice but to start laughing, too. 

“Oh God!” She keeps laughing.

“I’m definitely benched for the game here, Pen, what are you laughing at?”

 

“We kissed this morning.”

“Uh… yeah.” His smile loses a bit of buoyancy as he realizes he might be the punchline of this joke.

“I kissed…  _ Schneider _ .” She makes an almost disgusted face and sits back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. 

“Um, ouch! What’s  **_this_ ** ?” He mimics her disgust face.

“You’re  _ Schneider _ . You’re my landlord and my friend and hang out with my family when I’m not here. Schneider.  _ Schnei-der _ .” She closes her eyes and starts to laugh again softly, though this time less at the situation and more at herself.  _ AyDiosMíoQuéEstoyPensando _

“Y’know that thing they warn you against? About not wearin’ out names? I think you’re doing that to mine!”

At the sound of his confused and hurt voice, she sits up quickly, “no! No. I just mean, I can’t date you. It’s  **_you_ ** .” She emphasizes by rubbing his chest.

His whole body deflates, “because I’m  _ too _ much in your life?” Before his eyes can drop fully to his hands on his lap, he catches a glint in hers and double-takes. “As they say, I guess,  _ your dairy cow can’t be your beef cow. _ ” He shrugs.

“When has anyone ever said that?” Penelope squints her eyes.

“Why are you so afraid of a one-stop-shop?” He winks and opens his arms wide to indicate himself.

“See, that one makes more sense, cause it doesn’t suggest I’m killing and eating you.”

Still sensing that she’s deflecting for a reason, he continues. “C’mon. Why is this so strange?”

 

About 10 seconds go by of wordless eye contact and she answers, “maybe it isn’t.” While trying to stamp her arms down at her sides, her pinky brushes his hands in his lap and they both flick their eyes down at their touching hands for a millisecond - then back up at each other.

And, in case Schneider needed any more proof that God didn’t exist, the door to the apartment opens and three fighting Alvarezes walk in.

Schneider jumps to stand up from the couch.

“Jour childrren  _ insisted _ we come back because of jos a lil rrain! Los Angeles breeds weakness!” Lydia walks straight to the den and swings her curtains closed on the whole family.

Schneider watches Alex and Elena roll their eyes ( _ just like Pen does _ ) while they walk to their rooms.

He clicks his tongue as a sort of Marco-Polo game to wordlessly check if the moment’s passed. 

“Yeeeeaaah.” Penelope says, while she rises to standing, making very pointed eyes at the curtain.

Schneider mouths an  **_oh_ ** back and twitches his head to suggest they head into the hall.

 

Before the door is all the way closed behind them, they pull toward the other so in unison that they both muffle an “oof” as they collide into a kiss. After they’ve made a spectacle for at least one neighbor, Schneider mumbles against her cheek, “so, we’re doin’ this?”

  
  
  


Penelope’s shimmering smile paints her entire face and she speaks directly to his mouth. “Yeah, we definitely are.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I own none of the One Day At a Time Characters.


End file.
